Warlords of Draenor is upon us, and the Dark Portal has opened for the second time. It’s time to journey to the other side and see what the next World of Warcraft expansion has in store for us. This guide is aimed towards Paladins specifically—Paladins of all specs—and will give you vital tips for preparing for WoD, leveling from 90-100, maximizing your garrison, and beginning the gearing up process immediately upon reaching level 100.

It isn’t meant to be a comprehensive leveling guide or gearing guide, but merely an introduction to the expansion and a guide for how to go about preparing your Paladin for making the climb to level 100 with ease. Let’s get started, shall we?

Preparing for the Leveling Journey

Depending on your Paladin’s current gear level, at level 90 there are a few things you can do to prepare yourself to make the leveling process a little easier. Here are some tips:

Have multiple trinkets on-hand. Some percentage-based Siege of Orgrimmar trinkets, such as the currently-awesome Evil Eye of Galakras Retribution trinket, will lose their effectiveness immediately upon reaching level 91. You will likely find that other trinkets, like Skeer’s Bloodsoaked Talisman will be better to equip once you reach level 91. Pure stat trinkets will likely scale much better until you can find upgrades.

The heirloom weapons off Garrosh are going to be quite useful for the leveling process, but they will lose their effectiveness for every level you gain until reaching level 100. At level 100 all heirloom weapons—no matter which raid difficulty they were obtained from—will scale to ilevel 620 at level 100. This means the stats will all be equal at this point. The only benefit to having a weapon from a higher difficulty Garrosh kill is due to the fact that each ilevel scales differently on the way to level 100. A Mythic weapon, for example, will still be better than a Heroic weapon at levels 91-99, but at level 100 they’ll be the same.

You only need gear ilevel 505 or above to do well in the first WoD zone. Everything in the first couple of zones is scaled down quite a bit, in fact, so even if you only have MoP greens you should do perfectly fine in the first zone. Don’t concern yourself with maximizing your gear before heading out to the new content.

All gear obtained while leveling in the open world—including quest reward gear and gear that drops from rare mobs—has a chance to randomly become an upgraded blue/epic version of the same piece. This can be a great way to quickly gain a quick ilevel boost, but never depend upon it happening. It’s quite random.

Retribution will be the best spec to solo level all the way to level 100 obviously. Leveling as Protection is completely doable as well, but may take slightly longer depending on your gear (equipping Ret trinkets/meta gems will help with this considerably). Holy will be rather slow unless you have a friend or two. Solo leveling as Holy is never recommended, but leveling via dungeons mostly is always an option.

If you have raid gear from SoO or even fully-upgraded Timeless Isle pieces, you will find that you won’t be replacing most of your gear right away. Thanks to the item squish, scaling works quite differently in WoD. If you’re extremely geared you may even find you keep some pieces all the way to level 100 (legendary cloaks, for example). Check the next section for details on where you’ll likely be changing out your current gear.

As you level, you’ll get new class perks at levels 92, 94, 96, and 98. There are four total and each spec has mostly unique perks. The order you’ll receive each is random, but these are the Paladin perks:

All specializations: Improved Forbearance (reduces the duration of Forbearance by 30 sec)

Ret: Empowered Divine Storm (HP consumers have a 25% chance to make your next Divine Storm free and deal 50% more damage), Empowered Hammer of Wrath (HoW can be used on targets below 35% health), Enhanced Hand of Sacrifice (Reduces cooldown of HoS by 30 sec)

Tier 2: Fist of Justice – Random stuns are handy for open world activities. Stun a mob to mine that ore node. Stun one mob while grabbing another. Stun that ganker and use Speed of Light to live another day. The possibilities are just too useful.

Tier 3: Eternal Flame or Sacred Shield – Eternal Flame is currently rather lackluster for group content, but for soloing it’s actually not bad, especially since it has a HoT component which means less downtime for you. Sacred Shield is also excellent and can be refreshed between pulls.

Tier 5: Sanctified Wrath for Protection, Sanctified Wrath or Divine Purpose for Ret. Leveling is all about the damage. Maximize it.

Tier 6: Light’s Hammer if you enjoy pulling massive groups of things, Execution Sentence if not. Personally, I found Light’s Hammer to be the most awesome spell for leveling. Gather all the things and plop down a Light’s Hammer along with some good ol’ AoE. Things just melt, and your health won’t budge much.

Ret Major Glyphs: Double Jeopardy, Divine Storm, Templar’s Verdict – I might have mentioned AoEing is fun. This glyph setup helps with either AoEing or single target killing, but pulling multiple mobs with Double Jeopardy and then AoEing? Perfect.

Prot Major Glyphs: Double Jeopardy, Final Wrath, Consecrator – AoE all the things.

Note: If you’re running dungeons, you may wish to mix some of this up or swap before dungeon runs.

Leveling Overview: Zones and Dungeons

If you’re looking to level as quickly as possible, it’s generally best to do a mix of dungeons and questing. You should definitely start out questing, however, since the first questing content you’ll get access to in Blasted Lands (go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar for the introductory quest) is mandatory for opening up WoD zones (these quests are technically in the Tanaan Jungle zone). You’ll also want to do all of the required intro garrison quests to unlock various garrison features and your first few followers.

The garrison feature itself is purely optional, but it’s definitely worth at least unlocking and taking to level 2. You’ll get access to some useful profession stations, bank access, mailbox access, inn access, a flight path, and even ways to collect ore/herbs (even if you aren’t an herbalist/miner!), make a quick buck or two, and get some nifty gear—including leveling gear and endgame gear (yes, even a rare chance at normal-mode raid drops eventually). The mission system that’s part of the garrison feature can be highly rewarding. Check out the next section for more info about garrisons, but the short answer to the question of “Is starting a garrison worthwhile?” is definitely “Yes”.

Here’s a rundown of the various zones and what level they’re ideal for. I’ll also note what item level quest rewards tend to be which will give you some idea of when you’re likely to start replacing gear.

Frostfire Ridge (Horde) /Shadowmoon Valley (Alliance) – Levels 90-92 – ilevel 510-522 quest rewards. If you’re in gear from the Blasted Lands intro quests or in Throne of Thunder gear, this is where you’ll start seeing upgrades. Also, yes, this is the only zone in WoD that’s split between the factions.

Here are a few tips for making your way through the zones for the first time:

Once you gain access to your garrison (in Frostfire Ridge/Shadowmoon Valley), this will be where you’ll receive new quests upon gaining levels and where you’ll get the introduction quests that take you to the new zones.

Once you unlock the mission system and start sending out followers on missions, you’ll also get a unique Hearthstone (on a different cooldown) that binds you to your garrison. This means you should rebind your actual Hearthstone to the most convenient inn where you’re currently questing. This makes it easy to go back to your garrison when need be and quickly return to questing. You will be spending a lot of time at your garrison.

The only real central hub in WoD besides your garrison is Ashran. Here you’ll find portals to your faction’s main hubs back on Azeroth as well as profession trainers and most reputation quartermasters. You also get a portal to Ashran inside your garrison when you upgrade your garrison to level 3. Note: This can only be done at level 100.

You don’t have to speak to any profession trainers to skill professions up from 600 to 700. Instead, you’ll need to engage in your profession activity and/or complete a small quest. For mining, herbalism, archeology, skinning, and fishing you will simply need to go to a WoD zone and mine an ore node, pick an herb, dig at an archeology site, skin a beast, or fish in any body of water to loot an item that lets you skill up from 600-700. You’ll then, of course, have to skill up from 600-700.

The items that let you skill up from 600-700 in cooking and first aid are random world drops in all WoD zones and require level 90. Using both items grant you your first few recipes. There are two ways to learn cooking recipes in WoD—by eating any of the new foods you’ll have a chance to learn that recipe, and by cooking any of the new recipes you’ll get a chance to learn other new recipes. There’s no need to ever go back to a profession trainer.

To be able to skill up from 600-700 in any crafting profession, you’ll need to either complete a small quest in Shadowmoon Valley/Frostfire Ridge (these are all different based upon your profession) or build the small garrison building that’s connected to your profession. You’ll be able to purchase the item to upgrade your profession off one of the vendors at your profession building. All recipes will either be automatically learned or can be purchased off your garrison building vendor.

Take the time to look for rares and treasures while leveling. Both can give you gear upgrades, fun toys/pets, extra gold, EXP, and more. WoD treasures, like MoP treasures, will sparkle. There are a lot more treasures this time around, and they’re always available and lootable once per character. Both also grant garrison resources. Note: You can only receive the good rewards/garrison resources from killing most rares once.

If you’re a completionist, you’ll want to complete bonus objectives while questing. These appear as blade icons on your map/mini map. Simply go to that area and you’ll automatically receive a quest to perform kill/gather objectives. Completing bonus objectives grants EXP/gold. If you complete all bonus objectives in any given zone, you’ll also receive a treasure map that shows the exact location of every treasure in that zone.

Here’s a list of the normal mode dungeons you can do while leveling from 90-100 and what levels they’re ideal for. Also listed is how many bosses are in that dungeon, where the dungeon is located, and what level of gear is obtainable from each:

All normal mode dungeons also have a heroic version. These can only be ran at level 100, of course, require item level 610 to use the LFD tool, and also require silver mode completion of your spec’s Proving Grounds challenge if you are solo queueing. You’ll gain a quest from your garrison upon hitting level 100 that introduces you to the Proving Grounds system (more on this later). Note: You don’t need to meet either the ilevel requirement or the PG requirement with a premade group.

Tips for Maximizing Your Garrison

As you level, it’s best to work on advancing your garrison alongside the leveling process. You’ll gain new followers as you quest, and you’ll also unlock new quests inside your garrison upon reaching new levels. Certain buildings like the mine, fishing shack, and herb garden will unlock at various levels, so be sure to check your garrison often—the entire area of it, not just the very center.

Send followers out on missions regularly. This can only be done from the garrison, so be smart about when you return to your garrison and why. Some missions are short—30 minutes for example—while others are long and may take 8 hours or more. Time does continue to run down while you’re logged out, so before logging off for the night, make sure to send your followers off (if you’re addicted to alts, you also might want to get them started with their garrisons ASAP and send off their followers too).

Once you’re able to, begin utilizing your mine and herb garden immediately. This lets you obtain ore and herbs without being a miner or herbalist. These items can be used for leveling your crafting professions or sold on the AH for quite a profit, especially at the start of the expansion.

In order to make the most out of your garrison, you will need garrison resources. These are needed for missions and new buildings. There are various ways to get garrison resources: From the Lumber Mill, from certain missions, from the resources cache that spawns to the right of your Town Hall, from a few other garrison caches that only spawn once per garrison, from rares and treasures out in the world (only obtainable the first time discovered/killed), from quest rewards, and from other random ways as well (looting Teroclaw nests in Talador or off the Smugger’s Den vendor in Spires of Arak are two examples). One of the most dependable ways to get garrison resources is with the aid of a Lumber Mill, which is a medium plot on your garrison.

In order to maximize your garrison and get it to level 3 immediately upon reaching level 100, you will likely want to build a Lumber Mill as one of your first buildings. You can change it to something else later. Getting your garrison to level 3 costs a whopping 2000 garrison resources.

Choose buildings that will help you either build the plots you really want (such as the Lumber Mill as noted above) or buildings that will help you to achieve your endgame goals. As a PvPer for example, you may want to build a Gladiator’s Sanctum. As a fulltime crafter, you may want to invest in a Storehouse, a Barn, and a Trading Post as well as your small profession plots. As someone looking to dive right into Mythic raiding ASAP, you may want to consider an Armory, an Inn, and potentially a Trading Post and a Salvage Yard.

Gold Making Tips

Crafting materials will sell for a tremendous amount at the start of a new expansion. Take advantage of this and sell extra if you have any. This is one reason why leveling your garrison ASAP is worthwhile—this grants you extra ore and herbs you can sell almost immediately.

Hunt down rares and treasures to gain extra gold while questing.

Don’t spend any money in the AH until reaching level 100 if you can avoid it. Things will be selling for ridiculous prices anyways.

Keep rare crafting materials like the Sorcerous Air, Earth, Fire, and Water items. These will likely sell well.

Even fish will likely sell well due to how easy it is to level cooking and first aid with fish.

Level 100 Paladin Talent Choices

When you reach level 100, your base talent build won’t change a lot, but you do get to choose between three new talents. Depending on your spec, the new choices will all be different. This is something new Blizzard has done for WoD. Here are all three choices for all three Paladin specs, our suggested scores for each spec as well as for PvE/PvP (from 1-10, 10 being the most useful), and a bit of commentary regarding each choice:

Talent choice 1:

Holy – Beacon of Faith

Mark a second target as a Beacon, mimicking the effects of Beacon of Light. Instant. 3 sec cooldown.

Ret and Prot – Empowered Seals

Passive: Your seals also cause your Judgment to empower you with an additional beneficial effect which persists through changing Seals:

Judgment of Insight: Heals you for 1% of your maximum health every 2 sec for 20 sec.

Judgment of Righteousness: Increases your haste by 15% for 20 sec.

Judgment of Truth: Increases your attack power by 15% for 20 sec.

Healing: 9

Tanking: 7

DPSing: 8

PVE: 7

PVP: 6

Commentary: For Holy, Beacon of Faith should be your default choice. It’s simply a no-brainer unless you want more emergency healing. For Prot and Ret, the choice is more difficult. Empowered Seals is extremely potent for both specs when performed perfectly, but it’s difficult to perform a normal rotation plus change seals every few seconds (more on this later). This talent, in general, isn’t recommended unless you’re an advanced player. It’s also generally better in PvE situations due to having less to worry about.

Talent Choice 2:

Holy – Beacon of Insight

Places a beacon of insight on an ally, increasing their healing received from your next direct single-target heal, or Holy Radiance, within 1 min by 30%. When consumed, or when the target reaches full health, it moves to the most injured ally within 40 yards. Limit 1. Instant. 15 sec cooldown.

Commentary: Compared to the other options in this tier, these options just don’t quite add up to be as potent. For Holy, the other two options are simply better. For Protection, this is the best DPS increase for this tier, but the 5-HP cost means you’d have to give up a SotR or two to pull off that DPS increase. It might be excellent for raid farm nights, however.

Finally, for Retribution, Seraphim is decent, but both of the other two options are simply better. The 5-HP cost is fairly daunting as well, especially since 5 HP is when Ret finishers do their most damage.

Talent Choice 3

Holy – Saved by the Light

Passive: When you or your Beacon of Light target drop below 30% health, you instantly grant the injured target a protective shield, absorbing up to 30% of their maximum health for 10 sec. You cannot shield the same person this way twice within 1 min.

Protection – Holy Shield

Passive: Increases your block chance by 15%, and allows you to block spells. Additionally, when you block, you deal 1 Holy damage to your attacker.

Commentary: Among the options for this tier, these final selections rank among the strongest for both Ret and Prot Paladins. Holy Shield is an iconic ability for Prot, and it’s returned in a sense, but as a passive that adds a fair chunk of mitigation to the tank arsenal. It doesn’t provide as much DPS as the other two options, but for pure, passive survivability, Holy Shield wins.

For Ret, Final Verdict is a very strong choice due to the way it empowers Divine Storm (especially when paired with Empowered Divine Storm). It makes the Ret rotation significantly more complex, but it is worthwhile. It’s also easier to manage than Empowered Seals, which should make the go-to for most Ret Paladins.

For Holy, Saved by the Light isn’t as valuable as Beacon of Faith overall, but it is great for progression fights and PvP since it can save others when you might not be able to.

Basic Level 100 Paladin Build Primer

These builds are meant to give you a basic suggestion of where to start. Any talent recommendations are just that—recommendations. You should feel comfortable experimenting with various options and finding out what works best for you, your playstyle, and your raid/group. Included with each build are rotation basics as well as stat priorities when you reach level 100.

Protection Primer

Example Small Group Tanking Build

This tanking build is designed for five mans heroics and challenge modes. You trade off some of the survivability you need in raids for higher DPS and threat, making fights go quicker.

Talents:

Tier 1: Speed of Light (if you need on-demand speed)

Tier 2: Fist of Justice

Tier 3: Sacred Shield

Tier 4: Unbreakable Spirit

Tier 5: Sanctified Wrath

Tier 6: Light’s Hammer

Tier 7: Holy Shield or Seraphim

Glyph 1: Alabaster Shield

Glyph 2: Final Wrath

Glyph 3: Holy Wrath (if there are trash mobs that can be stunned) or Consecrator

Example Raid Tanking Build

This second build is focused purely on increasing your survivability when facing single target bosses.

Tier 6: Execution Sentence (remember you can cast this on yourself if need be)

Tier7: Holy Shield

Glyph 1: Focused Shield or Consecrator (if mobility is key)

Glyph 2: Divine Protection (if there is no magical damage) or Final Wrath

Glyph 3: Alabaster Shield

Single Target Rotation

The basic Prot priority-based rotation hasn’t changed at all since level 90 unless you take Empowered Seals or Seraphim. For Empowered Seals, you’ll want to juggle between Insight and Righteousness, using the seals during your gaps between HP generation).

If not using Empowered Seals, you’ll want to use either Seal of Insight or Seal of Truth, depending on how much self-healing you’re looking to do. This is what your single target rotation essentially looks like (without Empowered Seals):

Since Shield of the Righteous is off the global cooldown, you should use it whenever you need to. Make sure to find room for Sacred Shield if you have it talented.

AoE Rotation

Use Seal of Righteousness when you’re tanking 3 or more enemies. The AoE rotation looks largely similar to the above priority list except you’ll want to replace Crusader Strike with Hammer of the Righteous. You’ll also want to prioritize any Grand Crusader procs and use Avenger’s Shield above Hammer of the Righteous when you do get a proc. Consecration also becomes more important than Hammer of Wrath. Make sure to use Light’s Hammer in AoE-heavy situations and use it when everything is nicely clumped together.

Stat Priority at level 100

Currently, this is the priority order for the best tanking stats at level 100:

Tier 4: Hand of Purity (can use on yourself) or Clemency (if in a large group)

Tier 5: Holy Avenger (for emergency healing)

Tier 6: Execution Sentence

Tier 7: Saved by the Light

Glyph 1: Protector of the Innocent or Beacon of Light.

Glyph 2: Flash of Light or Light of Dawn (if small group)

Glyph 3: Cleanse

Healing Rotation

Healers don’t really have a rotation. Rather, they predict and react to damage done accordingly. Here’s a very basic guide of how to heal as a level 100 Holy Paladin:

Use Holy Shock on cooldown. Use it to top off the tank or raid members to maximize your Holy Power. Also use any procs that are attached to it when they go off.

Spend Holy Power as needed on Word of Glory/Eternal Flame or Light of Dawn for AoE healing.

Keep Beacon of Light on the tank/Beacon of Faith on another raid member or the off-tank. Use Flash of Light/Holy Light as needed to tank heal and/or keep raid members up. Use both to maintain your mana.

For massive AoE healing, you can use Holy Radiance, but it’s very mana-intensive.

Place Sacred Shield on the tank if you chose it.

Always use Seal of Insight.

Stat Priority at level 100

This is the current stat priority for Holy Paladins at level 100. Since Int can’t be stacked technically, you’ll generally want to focus on stacking haste wherever you can. Here’s the full priority list:

Int > Haste > Versatility > Mastery > Multistrike > Crit

How to Get Better Gear at Level 100

As always, once you reach the level cap, this is where the real fun begins. There are a myriad of endgame routes to dive down, but your first concern should be getting yourself better geared so you can take on greater challenges. Here’s a basic primer for some of your options for getting better gear:

Complete the quests in Nagrand that you haven’t yet completed. Some of the upgraded quest rewards and rare drops can be quite decent.

Do the quest received from your garrison to complete bronze level of the Proving Grounds. You can queue right from your mission specialist NPC. This gives you an ilevel 610 weapon. It’s also good practice for completing the silver Proving Grounds requirement for solo queuing for heroic dungeons. It’s quite easy to beat both bronze and silver. Just practice a time or two if you’re new to Proving Grounds or the spec you’re trying out. In general, PGs all come down to knowing when to use your cooldowns. Save them for the right moments and you’ll be successful.

Get your garrison to level 3 and keep collecting followers to increase the number of missions you can send them out on. Once you get some followers to level 100, they’ll be able to do level 100 missions which can grant you some great rewards including gear upgrades for yourself. Keep an eye out for rare missions, especially. Once the raids open up, you’re even able to rarely get epic raid drop rewards from certain missions. You can also run garrison invasions to get equipment.

Run the level 100 normal mode dungeons. These grant you ilevel 615 gear. A few pieces of this gear and you’ll be ready for heroics in no time.

Obtain crafted gear. There are a ton of excellent crafted options in WoD, and most are ilevel 640. You can craft in your garrison even if you aren’t that crafting profession, but it can take considerably longer. Note: It’s possible that you may only be able to equip 3 crafted items total on a character. That’s how it worked in beta, although that may still change in the live version of the game.

You can obtain ilevel 630 gear and above by collecting Apexis Crystals. You can obtain a daily to collect these from your garrison if it’s level 2 or above. There are both PvP and PvE daily options. There’s a group PvE challenge as well as one to kill elites in various zones.

PvP gear is an option, but it’s not as strong as it was in MoP for PvE content. You can grab a few ilevel 620 pieces from PvP, however.

There’s no real need to farm certain reputations unless you’re after additional followers, cosmetic rewards, or achievements. There are a few trinkets you can get from reputation vendors, but they’re not very good, especially for Paladins.

Run heroic dungeons once you reach an average level of 610 or find a premade group to physically run to the instances with. All heroic dungeons drop gear that’s ilevel 630. You’ll also sometimes get a chance to get an ilevel 644 piece with a gem socket in a heroic, but this is rare. Note: Heroic dungeons are more difficult in WoD, but not quite as difficult as Cataclysm dungeons were right out of the gate.

As soon as you can find a static group, start running Challenge Modes daily. In Ashran you can grab a daily CM quest that offers you a bag that can contain epic ilevel 640 gear. You don’t even have to obtain bronze, silver, or gold rewards in CMs to complete the daily—you just need to complete the run. This, by far, is one of the quickest ways to get pre-raid gear.

LFR is always an option when it becomes available, but it will not be for the first few weeks the raids are out. You’ll also want to do the Molten Core LFR that will be added during WoW’s 10th anniversary. You’ll automatically get an epic ilevel 640 helm for completing this part of the event.

Introduction to Raiding in WoD

When you’re ready to take on raid encounters, be sure to head to Ashran and do the quests for your three Seal of Tempered Fates a week. These are your seals that can be used to roll for bonus loot in raids. There are multiple ways to get seals this expansion—by either turning in gold, garrison resources, or Apexis Crystals. If you still have a Lumber Mill this can be an excellent way to quickly earn these.

The first raid, Highmaul, has a staggered release opening. Normal (655 ilevel drops) and Heroic mode (670 ilevel drops) will be available on Dec. 2nd while Mythic (685 ilevel drops) and the first half of LFR (640 ilevel drops) will open Dec. 9th. The 2nd half of LFR opens Dec. 16th and will require ilevel 635. There are 7 encounters in this raid.

Additionally, there are three world bosses you can take part in: Drov the Ruiner (drops ilevel 650 necks, belts, and gloves), Tarlna the Ageless (drops ilevel 650 chests, belts, and gloves), and Rukhmar (drops ilevel 665 boots, rings, and pants). These can be done before Highmaul open, so be sure to use your weekly seals on these fights.

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